Driving along the Mt Carmel Hwy in Zion, I spotted this cliff with the trees at the bottom. This is a very high cliff face and to shoot it I had to climb up on a rock with a large drop off to the canyon below. The view point which was next to the road put you within 100 feet or so of this monolith.

Using a 17mm lens, I tried a vertical first, then a horizontal, and then using the shift function, I did a 3 image stitch in both vertical and horizontal orientation of the camera. The vertical did not come out well because I have a hard time seeing vertical images in the viewfinder or LCD.

I am not happy with any of these. The entire area was in shade, which makes exposure fairly easy, but also lacks something.

The shade adds blue which mixed with the red of the rocks gives a magenta cast that seems to need some correction. In addition the saturation of colors on the rock face detract from the fall foliage colors. IMO this would look much better if the cast is corrected and the saturation of the colors on the rocks was toned down. Usually I like to darken the background. In this case I think the fall colors would pop more if they were darker and of course more saturated. Fixing these issues would be relatively easily but really needs to be done starting with the raw file. I gave one of your images a very quick fix mostly just to show the direction that I think would help.

Ben, I think your original is fine colorwise (shade is shade, after al). My nit is with the framing -- I am bothered by what appears to be trees with their 'ankles' cut off. Since you did not include the top of the cliff, I would have framed to include more at the bottom.

sadja wrote:
Ben, I think your original is fine colorwise (shade is shade, after al). My nit is with the framing -- I am bothered by what appears to be trees with their 'ankles' cut off. Since you did not include the top of the cliff, I would have framed to include more at the bottom.

Hi Sadja.

I would have liked that, but it was physically impossible without some sort of rock climbing. There may be a trail to the base from another starting location I don't know. But then the problem would be a very narrow base and so close to the trees and cliffs that I doubt anything could be framed.

I suspect this is a place where I needed to use a longer lens and do some kind of partial. It was grand to see in person, but does not translate well.

I used Kents hue trick and when the slider maxes saturation, green is the predominate color, Hardly any blue or magenta. I tried desaturation and had no luck. I added a warming photo filter and liked that best.

Here is a warmed up version and a SOOC to play with. Maybe some other crop would work.
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Ben, perhaps you should be a bit more specific about how you want these images to appear. I am not wild about the red filter. I still like the idea of featuring the fall colors and toning down the colors of the rock face. If you don't like that approach, I would feature the fall colors and just a portion of the rock wall. I am more than sure you won't like this approach either but I thought I would show another approach

Hi Jim, this is a problem image and I am seeking help to figure out how to do this. I liked what I saw in person, but not the results. I don't know how to do tight shots like this, I am a big vista guy.

But the reason I stopped here was those fantastic rugged copper cliffs. The fall color was not my reason for stopping, in fact I did not even see it until I got closer so I tried to include it.

But for what I ended up with, it seems like the fall color is the preferred subject here. In which case I hardly needed to go to Zion, or at least not this part of Zion.

This is nice Kent. You preserved some copper while enhancing the fall color. I think the key was to go for a lighter overall image. Mine is probably closer to reality (it was about an hour after sunrise in a shady area).

But plausible reality is what you have here.

It always amazes me how flat and dull a raw image is. I need to see if I can dupe yours.

Better ... still got some blues at the lower portions, but given the angles involved @ light being received that deep, the gradient of WB is to be expected (not unlike Antelope Canyon colors, just to a much lesser degree). That'll be a preference call @ how you want to retain / mitigate the blues.

Now that is indeed the direction I was trying to reach in my first stab at this. I like the color you have for the rock face but there is still a little adjusting needed to tame the blue-purple color in the foliage.

Hi Jim. Since I don't see these color nuances I must post them as I see them and then ask. I see dead branches, but they look grey to me.

This of course was not at all what the scene looked like in person, it was far darker. Much darker than my SOOC too. So we are trying to get daylight colors on a shady scene. Sort of like when I do moonlight shots. There is no human experience for the desired final look.

As for the dead wood, I am inclined to crop it out because it adds nothing and is a distraction. Do you see blue in other areas?

So we are trying to get daylight colors on a shady scene. Sort of like when I do moonlight shots. There is no human experience for the desired final look.

This is a bit of a dilemma for those who "weren't there". It kinda reminds me of forensic photography that is trying to replicate/emulate the human experience of what a person driving at night would have seen. It is very much NOT the same thing as a well exposed image of the same scene. It

That being said, I think that if you take an image (in general) to a baseline for "correction" purposes, then you can readily put your "mood" or "as seen" to it from there ... without some of the "issues" that can come with the sooc. Anyway, that's a bit reflective of my Dan Margulis philosophy showing through.

Will have to give some thought @ how "as seen" might be approached for this one.

This does not work well as seen. Too dark, the original examples were as seen to my judgement.

You and Jim are on the right track to remake this as a daylight shot. But when you move from letting the camera wb and exposure do the job to imposing some arbitrary but believable different wb and exposure, you need to have good color judgement.

I am not sure this is something that can be developed. An analogy is a lens. An f4 lens will never gather as much light as an f1.2 lens. If color accuracy had f stops I would have f4 eyes. Your test that you posted a while back made that clear to me.

Your and Jim see blue, I see grey, but I am certain that Jim is correct. I tried your hue slider trick and did not see much blue, mostly green.